He Won’t Be Back: ‘Terminator’ Franchise Reportedly Dead

Did you know that they apparently made another Terminator movie in 2015? Despite having seen it in theaters back during its original run, this still strikes me as new, hard-to-believe information. If there was really a new installment of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s popular sci-fi/action franchise as recently as two years ago, wouldn’t someone remember that? Wikipedia claims that the film (subtitled Genisys, which sounds fake but okay) attempted to launch Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke’s big-screen phase of her career, included a clutch starring role from Ahnuld himself, and earned the second-most of any entry in the series. Call me crazy, but that seems like a pretty major occurrence to have entirely fled the public‘s collective pop-cultural memory. I’m skeptical — does this look like a real movie to you?

But a new report suggests that this questionably-existent film will mark the final appearance from the literal killing machine that made Schwarzenegger a star. The New York Daily News cites a confidential source who claims that the Governator’s hanging up his shades and his shotgun, as Paramount has passed on the option to bring him and Clarke back for additional films under the Tyrmynatyr (sp?) banner. Though another sequel had initially been slated for later this year, perhaps the vicious critical dogpile cooled Paramount on the prospect of more where that came from. (Additionally, at 69 years old, Schwarzenegger’s getting a little long in the tooth to be killing homicidal robots.)

Paramount declining to renew their ownership of the rights to this creative property means that another studio could legally snatch them up and reignite the series, but the aforementioned factors have rendered that pretty unlikely. Though the T-800’s whole thing is that it never dies, it may be time to lay the story that introduced it to rest.